When does human life begin? An advisory from the CBCP

The RH bill: a moral time bomb

The Pastoral Letter of Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan on the final passage of the RH bill in both Congress and Senate:

Let us move on

For the record: Catholic Pastoral Letters on the RH Bill, December 15 to 16, 2012

1) The Pastoral Letter of the CBCP on the RH Bill: 

Contraception is Corruption! (Signed by Archbishop Socrates Villegas of Lingayen-Dagupan.)

The same letter, in Filipino:

Ang Kontrasepsyon Ay Katiwalian CBCP Pastoral Statement

2) Pastoral Letter of Bishop Ramon Villena of the Diocese of Bayombong: 

We Believe in God, We Believe in Life, We Believe in Miracles.

3) Pastoral Letter of Abp. Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle on the RH Bill (after the 2nd voting). "Pahayag sa Simbanggabi, Dec. 16, 2012..."

CAP commentary: This is a different and later statement from Cardinal Tagle's statement of December 12, 2012 (See this: Statement of His Eminence, Luis Antonio Cardinal Tagle, on the RH bill)

In the interests of fairness and accuracy, this statement by Cardinal Tagle -- which mentions the RH bill only in passing -- does not directly tell Congressmen and Senators to vote versus the RH bill. Instead, it simply tells them to "accept Jesus with joy", and reminds them that it is the Word and Wisdom of Jesus that is necessary to form consciences.

Tagle Statement

4) The Pastoral Letter that Archbishop Socrates Villegas penned specifically for his Archdiocese:

PRAISE AND REBUKE

TO BE READ IN ALL MASSES IN THE ARCHDIOCESE OF LINGAYEN DAGUPAN AT THE START OF THE HOMILY ON DECEMBER 16, 2012.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, our congressmen voted on second reading the Reproductive Health Bill. The goal is to rush the passage of the Bill before the start of the Congress Christmas break. The same seems to be the goal of our senators.

I am very pleased to issue this public commendation to our representatives in Congress namely Congresswoman Gina de Venecia, Congresswoman Rachel Arenas and Congressman Leopoldo Bataoil for voting against the Reproductive Health Bill. They are our heroic and exemplary representatives in Congress. They voted to stand up for life. They voted to stand up for morality and decency. They voted as God loving government officials. We commend them for their courageous conviction and encourage you my dear Catholic faithful to support them with your prayers and make known to them your appreciation for their fidelity to our cherished Filipino Catholic values.

The Reproductive Health Bill, if passed into law in its present form, will put the moral fibre of our nation at risk. As I have said in the past, a contraceptive mentality is the mother of an abortion mentality. The wide and free accessibility of contraceptives, even to the youth, will result in the destruction of family life and in greater violence against women.

The Church is your mother protecting you from harm. If passed into law in its present form, it will not take long for the supporters of the Bill to see the irreparable harm they will bequeath to the younger generation. Those who mislead the young invoke divine punishment on themselves. Let us leave to the young a legacy of decency and morality not promiscuity and moral corruption.

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan

5) The Pastoral Letter of Bishop Leo Drona:
An Open Letter to the Congressmen of the Four Districts of Laguna

What would Cardinal Sin have said about the RH bill?

The following speech by Archbishop Socrates Villegas has been published on the blog of the Archdiocese of Lingayen-Dagupan:

Missing Cardinal Sin

Reflection by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas during the renaming ceremony of E. Rodriguez St.(Mandaluyong City) to Jaime L. Cardinal Street, 31 August 2011

Do you still care to remember Jaime Cardinal Sin? He passed away only six years ago. How time flies! How fast we forget! He would have been eighty three years old today. I wonder if people still remember. As for me, how can I forget? I will always remember and I still miss him.

Cardinal Sin had something to say about almost everything happening to the Church and Philippine society. He did not have to go to Luneta to be heard. Even if he whispered to the wall, society somehow caught his opinion, media was swift to publish and gossipers were quick to exaggerate.

I lived with him as his secretary for eighteen years. I lived with him longer than I lived with my own parents. He taught me. He guided me. He allowed me to care for him. I knew he cared for me as much as he cared for the millions who belonged to his flock. He knew the meaning of living a dangerous life. He knew the meaning of being ready to die to protect his beloved.

What would Cardinal Sin tell us about what is going on the country now? What would Cardinal Sin do about the situation of the Church and government now? Only Cardinal Sin can answer for Cardinal Sin and only Cardinal Sin can answer like Cardinal Sin.

As I remember him and as I knew him, I offer these conjectures of a nostalgic former secretary.

I close my eyes and imagine him in the car on our way to an engagement. I imagine him say: The real battle about the reproductive health bill is not with the legislature where the debates are ongoing and where the voting will be done. The real person to wrestle with is not the President who has sadly called the bill a priority bill. The real battle is in the minds and hearts of our youth. The youth are being misled by wrong teachings. The youth are like parched dry sponge. In their thirst, they absorb all and retain them regardless of the purity of source. I pity our youth. The Church cannot impose its right and authority in this highly pluralistic society. It must be willing to join the arena of public opinion, use new methods and approaches and even jejemon vocabulary to make the message of God convincing. It is not the duty of churchmen to lobby in government offices. Our duty is to teach Christ and only Christ. Our duty is to form people’s minds and prick consciences and let those formed consciences speak up in the plaza of public opinion. This is lay empowerment. This is youth empowerment. This is the church of the people not the church of bishops.

There is a problem deeper than the anti life and anti family bills in the legislature. The blasphemous art exhibits point to a deeper and more alarming issue. The irreverent calumny thrown at religious leaders are symptoms of deeper problems. It is due to the wrong understanding of freedom and the misplaced primacy that is laid on conscience.

After EDSA 1986, we all discovered a fresh breeze of freedom in the air. Lost liberties were restored and the freedom to express was held in high esteem. Freedom is indeed a noble human right and a sublime aspiration but it not unlimited. Freedom since EDSA 1986 has been abused, terribly abused. Freedom is not absolute. The limit of freedom is love. The exercise of freedom must make us more loving. If the use of freedom violates the freedom of another, it is licentiousness; it fails to love. That freedom is lewd and obscene.

There is no absolute freedom. Freedom has limits. Its limit is truth. When freedom violates or assails truth, it can no longer be called freedom. It is debauchery and brute arrogance.

Freedom must respect the law. Freedom without respect for law is anarchy. Laws do not restrict freedom. Laws help us to live in order. When life is orderly, freedom is also safeguarded.

Our countrymen who declare themselves Catholics because they attend Catholic liturgies but disregard the commandments of God and the precepts of the Church are gravely in error. To be a Catholic, it is not enough to pray the Catholic prayers. To say you are a Catholic, you must also live as a Catholic. It is not enough to act according to conscience. Before listening to that conscience, we must first insure that the conscience is sensitive to the laws of God. Conscience is not the ultimate tribunal. The Truth that God has taught us is the highest tribunal. That Truth is in the bible. That Truth is handed to us in the teachings of the Church.

How I miss Cardinal Sin! He taught me to cherish freedom but he also warned me not to raise it to a value more than it deserves. Freedom is one of the great gifts of God to men but the greatest gift is love. Use your freedom to be more loving because “the greatest is love”. Aim for the greatest. Freedom must recognize unchanging truths. Freedom must not enchain truth. Truth is the mother of freedom and it is the height of ingratitude to enslave your mother, isn’t it?

He taught me: Follow your conscience when it speaks but make sure the ears of that conscience are ever attuned to God. When a deaf conscience speaks, ignore that voice. That is the voice of error. Knowing what is right and what is wrong is not inborn. Conscience must be formed and molded unto Christ. The duty of conscience is to listen to its God so that it may be credible when it speaks.

The legacy of Cardinal Sin is freedom. Let us understand freedom in depth. The love of Cardinal Sin was the youth and children. He taught them well. I will honor him by loving those he loved and living as he lived and believing in what he stood for.

Pastoral Statement of Archbishop Socrates Villegas versus the RH Bill

Pastoral Statement of the Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan on the RH Debate

CHARITY AND CONSCIENCE

ON THE RH DEBATE

Pastoral Statement of the Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan to be read as the homily in all Masses on May 29, 2011, the Sixth Sunday of Easter.

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ:

Love is the core of the message of Jesus in today’s gospel. Love is indeed the trademark of the followers of Jesus. The Lord promises further in the gospel that if we choose the path of love and keep His commandments we will never be orphans.

The past few months have seen many of us who belong to the same Church and who share the same faith in Christ at odds with one another on the issue of the reproductive health bill in Congress. It is indeed sad and perhaps even scandalous for non Christians to see the Catholic flock divided among themselves and some members of the Catholic lay faithful at odds with their own pastors. If we fail to have love, we make ourselves orphans.

BRING BACK CHARITY

It is certainly not our intention to add more flame to the fire but rather to make an appeal for the triumph of reason and sobriety. We want to make a plea for greater charity even as we passionately state our positions on this divisive issue. At the end of the heated debates, we will all be winners if we proclaim the truths we believe in with utmost charity, courtesy and respect for one another. Charity is at the heart of the social doctrine of the Church Pope Benedict XVI reminds us. In the first letter of Peter today, he admonishes us today never to be without gentleness and reverence.

RETURN TO CONSCIENCE

We appeal to our Catholic brethren who stand on opposing sides on the reproductive health bill to return to the voice of conscience, to state their positions and rebut their opponents always with charity. Today’s second reading is a call for clarity of conscience beyond reproach. The moral conscience is man’s sanctuary through which the voice of God is heard, that voice that tells us to embrace what is good and reject what is evil. However, conscience is not the ultimate tribunal of morality. Conscience must be formed in the light of truth. Conscience must be enlightened by the Spirit of God. We appeal to both sides engaged in debate to pray, to seek the light of God and allow the voice of an enlightened conscience to prevail. We pray conscience does now allow itself to be swayed by statistics or partisan political positions. The only voice conscience must listen to is the voice of God. The only way for conscience to speak is through the language of Christ-like charity.

RESTORE UNITY

We appeal to our Catholic brethren to remember that the unity of the Church does not only pertain to the acceptance of a set of doctrines. Our Catholic faith has a moral mandate. It is not enough to recite the Apostles’ Creed; we must show that we are Catholics by living by the norms of Catholic morality. We are Catholics by creed and cult and code. We are Catholics in beliefs. We are Catholics in prayer. We are Catholics with one moral life.

In matters of faith, unity; in matters of opinion, liberty; in all things charity!

The issue of contraception belongs to the realm of faith not opinions. Blessed John Paul II repeatedly taught us during his papacy that contraception can never be justified. We must not make wrong right by the sheer force of surveys or legislation by the majority or the convenience of some. People in authority who mislead others on the matter of contraception put themselves in open conflict with the law of God and lead others to sin.

FIGHT ALL CORRUPTIONS

The Church holds close to her heart the dream of everyone to rise out of poverty and live the fullness of life. Pope Paul VI correctly pointed out to us that “the causes of underdevelopment are not primarily of the material order. They lie above all in the will, in the mind and, even more so, in "the lack of brotherhood among individuals and peoples". In other words, the greater cause of underdevelopment is corruption of the soul and corruption of society. Contraception adds to the moral corruption of our society and family.

We all want progress for the nation and for the family of nations. We cannot progress without freedom. Jesus died and rose to set us free. Indeed EDSA 1986 taught us that. But freedom must always be grounded in truth. Freedom is not absolute. Freedom must submit to truth. Freedom without truth is only sentimentalism and will only lead to social laxity.

In fact, ethical relativism eventually leads to totalitarianism. Ethical relativism destroys freedom. Ethical relativism turns freedom into licentiousness. Licentiousness and laxity has destroyed many great civilizations of history. Those who ignore the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them.

CHURCH AS MOTHER

We plead with our officials in government and our friends in media to look at the Church as a partner in the mission of development. The Catholic Church throughout its two thousand year history in the world and almost five hundred years in the Philippines has proven itself as a potent agent for holistic authentic human progress and not an obstacle for development. If the Church issues this stern warning about the reproductive health bill, it is not to impede national progress but to protect our nation from greater harms and tragedies in the generations ahead. On this highly divisive issue, the Church is still a mother protecting her children from greater dangers and moral traps which until now her beloved children are still unable to foresee.

We need God if we want development. Jesus is the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life for us. There is none like Him. We will be lost without Him. Ignoring Him and setting Him aside in pursuing progress we do only at our own peril.

From the Cathedral of Saint John the Evangelist, May 24, 2011, Feast of Mary Help of Christians.

+SOCRATES B. VILLEGAS

Archbishop of Lingayen Dagupan

From the bishops, this Easter Sunday

From the Easter Message of Msgr. Nereo Odchimar, Bishop of Tandag and President of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines:

...The glorious event of resurrection has once and for all crippled the fortress of darkness. This incorruptible remembrance of God putting an end to the definitiveness of death is a strong message of hope—that in all of this, every work of evil shivers before the power of goodness. 

This good news must first and foremost be preached to “the regions beyond us (2 Cor. 10:16).” St. Paul had these encouraging words: “How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things (Rom. 10:15)!” It is equally unjust of us not to proclaim the triumphant joy of Easter to those who are seeking for light and life. To those whose hearts are hardened by pride and humanly motivated principles, let none of us yield to an idle surrender. Let the gospel be preached untiringly. 

What awaits us ahead of this earthly life is life in immeasurable abundance. Hence, it is unlikely of us to fear as we preach the truths of our faith. We are now the victorious children of resurrection and we despise every form of attack against the dignity and welfare of humankind. With renewed vigor, let us become builders of social transformation. Let us work for peace that lasts and justice that enhances human condition. Let us not be selfish as to deprive others of their right to live. Let us not be too clever as to deceive others to our own advantage. Let there be Easter in our midst by our presence that loves and cares.

From the Easter Message of Msgr. Socrates Villegas, Archbishop of Lingayen-Dagupan:

The victory of Easter is the victory of the Greatest Lover of all who died that we may have fullness of life. We who are an Easter people must pour love into our bleeding world, bind the wounds of our society and bring it back to life—through love. 

If indeed we are people ready to love, we must make our Easter Sunday an occasion to bring an end to cold indifference—walang pakialam! Love cares. Love gets involved. Love reaches out. 

The risen Lord pricks us to get involved in politics and make it a liberating not a corrupting kind of politics. The risen Lord urges us to bring Christian ethics to economics and put charity not profit as its overriding principle. The risen Lord sends us on a mission back to Galilee to restore all things to him. Easter people: spread the values of Christ! 

If love has indeed fully possessed us, then we must break out of our protective shells of our insensitivity and heartlessness—walang pakiramdam. Love takes responsibility. Love is rich in mercy. Love is kind. We cannot continue with Easter and continue to ignore the poor. It is not hard to meet the poor if we are not playing blind to their presence. We cannot claim to be an Easter people and yet not do anything about the silent moans of aborted babies. We cannot sing Alleluia and remain insensitive to rising criminality, the commercialization of sex and the unabated availability of shabu in the neighborhood. Easter people: act now! 

If we are truly an Easter people and love is our rule of life, we must destroy callousness and audacity—walang hiya. Contraception is corruption of love and life. It is not a solution. It will only open more problems for the soul of our nation. Sin is abnormal. Obedience to the Ten Commandments is normal. Let us not extol impurity and ridicule virtue. Polluting the minds of children by teaching them sex without God cries to heaven for divine justice. Easter people: stand up for life! 

Love is a verb not a noun. Easter is a mission not just an event. We can only share in the glory of this greatest of all days by making love reign supreme. 

Goodbye indifference and apathy.

Goodbye insensitivity and heartlessness.

Goodbye callousness and audacity. 

Let us live in love, for love and with love. Let us love. Easter is a feast of love and only those who love will see the glory of the Risen Christ!

Archbishop Socrates Villegas on how contraception betrays the spirit of EDSA 1

An excerpt from the homily delivered by Archbishop Socrates B Villegas during the Mass on the occasion of the twenty fifth anniversary of Edsa People Power on February 25, 2011 at the Edsa Shrine at 12:15 pm:

The twenty fifth year of Edsa gives us reason to thank the Lord and thank the millions of Filipinos who brought four shining days of glory to the history of our beloved country. But our joy and thanksgiving are mixed with frustration and disdain. As we say Salamat, we also shake our heads and strike our breasts with heads bowed and say: Sayang!

Sinayang natin ang Edsa! In 1986, the people came together to defend our soldiers from the revenge of the President who cheated the elections. The election cheating of 1986 was not the last. Many more cheatings happened after—massive, systematic and brazen and the guilty just refused to resign. Sinayang natin ang Edsa!

In 1986, the military was the darling of the people. AFP was armed forces of the people. With the dizzying magnitude of corruption among our military officials, shall we still gather together at Edsa if they seek our help and protection? The pre-Edsa military corruption that we rallied against in the 1980’s is chicken feed compared to the corruption we have been hearing about lately. Nakakasuka! Sinayang natin ang Edsa!

In 1986, we saw the power of millions of people coming together for freedom and peace. The more people, the more secure we felt. Now on its twenty fifth year, we say the opposite—the less people the better! In 1986, we said Tama na! Sobra na! Palitan na! Now, we say, Tama na ang isa! Sobra na ang dalawa! Mag pills ka na! Bakit nagkaganito? Contraception and corruption belong to same family. Contraception is corruption of the soul. Sayang.

In 1986, we raised our rosaries in prayer and stopped with our bare hands the tanks sent to crush us. I can still remember the billboard that stood on this street corner twenty five years ago. The family that prays together stays together. A world at prayer is a world at peace. Are will still a nation in prayer? If we want peace, pray. If we want unity, pray. If we want healing, pray. Tita Cory taught us that. Did we bury prayer power when she died? Sayang.